Weekend Catchup (1st Beepol Weekend)

Infrastructure

I made some minor infrastructure modifications this weekend. We noticed that the smaller, new bumblebees didn't seem to find the new wax moth flap system on the lodge as easy as we had hoped, despite it being slightly wedged open with blutac. It was easy for them to leave, but on return we noticed that they showed more interest in trying to get into the nest at the lodge lid join (smell?) rather than via the open flap. I have to say, this is slightly baffling when the entrance hole is easily accessible. 

In order to aid memorisation and detection of the entrance, I added some bright yellow tape and blue marking on the entrance flap, in case its transparency was causing an issue:

modifications to lodge entranceWe'll remove the blutac when there is a sufficient in-flow/out-flow of bees that they can learn from and assist each other working the flap. This way we'll slowly train the.

We also noticed that memorisation procedure was also taking in more of our other features in the garden, particularly the nestboxes and associated features. This stands to reason, since we have created that environment to be highly visible and attractive to queens. I wanted to make sure that we didn't inadvertently confuse our new bumbles; for example, into trying to return to one of the other nest boxes. To that end I painted a clear white line upto our lodge. Last year we painted a runway for fun - but since bumeblebees use linear features and markings for navigation, this clearly has a useful function for them. This should ensure that the bumbles are able to return to the lodge reliably, even if they are a little confused by the flap when they get there!

linear navigation feature for beepol lodge

Queen Catching

The weather has been all over the place this weekend - despite being sunny at times it never got above 11C on saturday and about 7C on Sunday. Nonetheless I went out queen hunting, if only to survey activity. 

• Saturday: captured 1 redtail very quickly 15:45 - and placed in pilkington box. She stayed in the capture tube, so much so I put the whole tube in there! Eventually left the box sunday. (QB2012-12)
• Saturday:  captured a second redtail at 16:30 - she was very placid, probably happy to bed down; went in box 1 very quickly and stayed there still all night, eventually leaving 11am Sunday. She did no memorisation so she won't be back. (QB2012-13)
• Sunday: I went out about 13:30. It had been sunny but, of course, as I left started to drizzle, eventually hail! Didn't think I'd find much but caught (and lost) a redtail, saw another redtail and bufftail and then eventually caught a bufftail. She also went into box 1, but I didn't observe her leaving. (QB2012-14)

QB2012-13 Redtail resting overnightOn saturday I noticed a few bumblebees out resting and also looking for places to rest, rather than nest. The one in this photo took quite a while exploring this piece of ground. I couldn't understand why as it is not good nest-location ground, but in the end she settled down just to rest. I was intrigued to see how she aligned herself with the features on the ground, as if to achieve better camouflage. (stripe lined up with the white/brown twig; thorax in the shadow). Coincidence or camouflage? It's an intriguing question, but I have a strong feeling that bumbles can use their markings as camouflage and I'm trying to collect as much evidence of this as possible. 

resting queen - coincidence or camouflage?

Nest Activity

For the first few days of the hive, activity levels inside seemed high but we had very few bees showing any interest in the outside world. I think some of those that did may have been lost, as we've not seen many return - although to be fair at this stage I'm not fully tracking all exits & return trips. 

There's quite a range of sizes in the nest - small workers at under 10mm ranging up to some that appear to be twice the size. We have seen one or two seemingly enormous bees on the internal camera, which I am still trying to get a good picture of, to establish if we might have seen the queen.

Finally today (Sunday 15th April) we've seen much more interest in the outside world, although they have picked a lousy day for it! (about 6C - 7C, rain and hail showers, and very windy) Nontheless, some of the tiny bumbles have been bringing pollen back, the first time we've seen that.  There still appears to be some confusion about finding the entrance hole, even with the flap wedged up, so we'll just have to keep an eye on that and ensure none get "stranded" outside the nest. 

Here's a wee one performing memorisation on her first flight.

performing memorisation during first flight from beepol lodge

Audio Frequencies

This year I've started sampling audio frequencies under certain situations to see if there is any pattern - it's purely exploratory at the moment. We've found a queen buzzing at almost a perfect middle C3 (130Hz). 

We noticed during the night the colony, while still busy is a lot quietier and when accompanied by crackling sounds (hatching) there is a single sustained note (often 30 seconds or more in length, repeatedly), so far measured at 180Hz.

During the hail storm today, the bumblees went crazy! A high pitched synchronised sustained buzz, almost like a scream, at between 400Hz and 500Hz. We'll do our best to capture more data to determine any patterns. 

Expanding on the Expanding foam

It was a great day again on Sunday so I took the opportunity to wield the expanding foam again. The plan was to do two things:

• modify our "triple 3-into-1 tube" set of fake entrances to be covered in moss and look more realistic - with the entrance holes much more vertical standing so they can be seen easily from above. 
• create an additional nest site from an old poster tube - the idea was to site this amongst the longer grass where the bumblebees have been nest searching, to make it look like a mossy embankment. 

It was all very easy - I've documented the steps in pictures below.

First i made a cardboard base for the "nest tube" and covered it in "bin bag" plastic. The plastic will go face down, to stop the cardboard getting damp and rotting. The top side will be protected by the expanding foam. 

I separated the two ends of tube by packing it with moss and a little hamster bedding. To create a slightly different environment, favoured by different species of bumbles I put a little more bedding in one end and stones in the other. 

contents of one end of the tube

As an extra precaution I fed 10mm tubing into the end of the pipe, to create extra ventilation (and potentially an inspection pathway). 

ventilation & access tube

I stuck the pipe to the base with gaffer tape. As ever I included a thermometer, down into the centre of the tube. Soft drink bottle bases cover the ends. It ended up looking like some kind of crazy bomb. I can assure you it's perfectly safe. ☺

assembled nest tube, with thermometer, before foam is added

Next the fun (and messy bit) - cover the tube in expanding foam. As is started to dry (about 15 minutes) I spray painted it dark brown (mud / earth colour). Looks like a nice cake! ☺

nest tube covered in expanding foam

As it continued to dry, but still a little tacky, I covered in moss, collected earlier in the week. 

moss layer completed

The placed amongst the longer grass. Not sure how I can make it any more real than this, other than actually digging up the lawn! The dark patch on the right hand side is of particular interest. 

final site of nest tube in long grass

Next, the same trick for our "3 into 1" tubing, which goes to a nest box. I made a cardboard wedge from an old box and waterproofed the same way. Note, I poked drain holes along the tubes. 

3-way tube being prepped for foam

Then the foam, as before. The two uppermost pipes are fake.. they are blocked off - just there for additional effect. 

foam added

Again, spray painted brown, then the moss added while tacky.

triple tube, covered in moss..

Here's a view of the two systems in place along the central line we have created down the garden. Bumblebees like to navigate along linear features, often edges (e.g. gravel / grass edge, or crop edge). Our flags and long grass creates the linear feature (and actually shows some signs of working!).

tubes in situ, leading to small nest box

Close up of the 3-into-1 tubes. We are experimenting with one yellow entrance. We do not really expect interest in this, because the Queens tend to think it is a flower, not a hole. But the experiment will see how rigidly they stick to this basic understanding. You can see the nestbox that the tubes lead to. 

close up. 

Finally a view of the entire feature.

full setup - with clear linear featureOur next job will be to simplify the clutter along the left of the picture - the edge is not sufficiently defined and we think the plants (mainly heather) are too close to the nest areas. We'll move them to the cloche area and again try to create a strong linear feature along the lawn edge.

BCW saw 3or 4 queens nest searching in the garden today. They had slightly improved interest in our setup, but not enough to fully explore any of the entrances. We'll get there!

Gone but not forgotten...

This post is a day late because I didn't get chance yesterday - and is a quick update on the Queen (QB2012-06) we introduced to the nest on Saturday night (March 24th). We introduced her to the box around 4.15pm (GMT as it was then) and after 2 hours is what clear she was going to stay the night. 

We placed the capture tube against the entrance of the nestbox and she was quick to enter, mooching about while we loosened the moss in the end of the tube; we left it in place up against the box.  

I also set up the cameras so they would record her leaving in the morning. 

On Sunday morning I got up (clocks went forward, so I was groggy!) and it looked like the moss had been dislodged so I assumed she had gone. I checked several hours of footage, nothing, so I was a bit baffled, but assumed she must have broken out before sunrise (which bothered me).

Anyway, later we decided to see what she'd done to the bedding, so had a look through the red filter about midday, and she was still in there! Now I was worried because this meant she probably hadn't been able to break out as I thought; and now she was scratching at the air vents.

So, as a test I changed the capture tube for the narrow, longer piping (about 50cm), but she still showed no interest, I think not enough light coming down it. So, in the end I changed it again for our short 'funnel' made from the head of a bottle and she soon emerged.

She walked out, probably a bit hungry! And spent nearly 30 minutes foraging on our heather and wandering about, preening on our gravel and generally getting back into shape. We may have stressed her a little more than we intended, so we figured we'd go a lot easier on the moss (consequently today two queens escaped before even going into the box, but that's ok, I'd rather it was that way). Always a learning process!

I'm convinced this queen flew back again twice, she actually seemed to have an interest in the same piece of garage wall on all three occasions and followed same flight path. But who knows?

It was a beautiful day, so I went out again today and caught a redtail (QB2012-07) and a bufftail (QB2012-08). Redtail got away by breaking out from the moss end of the tube before entering the box - this is fine; better that than undue stress. We placed the bufftail at about 4:50pm (remember, the clocks went forward so sunset has moved to 7:30pm) and observed for well over an hour and she stayed in the box. We made sure she could easily escape - just attaching 50cm tubing unhindered to the outside world - although it's quite dark, perhaps not obvious as an exit at first. 

I actually didn't see many nest searching today, they were all resting in the warm late afternoon sun.  Quite a lot of bumbles actually: carders, bufftailed, redtail... But mainly I saw them all foraging and resting, barely any nest searching. 

I checked the cameras this morning from about 6.20am non-stop to about midday and saw nothing of our Queen. Eventually BCW had a look in the box and she was not there. I think therefore that she didn't stay the night, but actually snuck out about 6.30pm when we decided to eat. In a way it's good, because it meant she discovered and used the long thin tube. She didn't come back today though, so we just have to keep a lookout for any of the queens returning a later date if they liked the box.

BCW also made some adjustments to the box - to flatten the bedding a bit to improve the camera view and to provide some sugar water in the box. We're really happy with the setup now.  

not all flags and fake tubes

Every day I think I've finished our bumblebee setup, and every day I come up with something new. ☺

So, today I was lying in bed thinking I need more flags! When I say "flags",  I mean the fake flowers we made the other day. It occured to me we could use them mroe constructively to bring the exploring bumbles nearer to our nest entrances, and possibly train them to a degree by offering a reward if they follow them. It's well established that (honey) bees can be trained -e.g. to detect explosives and bumbleebees are trained during lab experiments. 

Anyway - I decided to create a row of flags leading to the boxes; to extend one above our garden wall so it is visible from outside the garden, and to flag each entrance to a nestbox. Anyway,  here are the pictures of the set up. 

descending row of hi-viz flags

flags by each of the nest entrance tubes

There is a small reward on some of the flags, by way of some sugar water. This may train any bumblebees to keep visiting the yellow flags, which will ultimately draw them nearer to the nest box entrances. 

row of flags approaching the nest boxes

I also decided that it might be useful to bury some more entrance tubes in the lawn. These don't go anywhere, but are intended just to be highly visible to Queens and give them a reason to explore the garden. By having more, there's a greater chance they will spot one in passing and investigate, thus increasing the chance of spotting others. 

fake entrance tube - using hi-vis tape for contrast

high flag on pussy willow - visible from outside the garden

Of course, it wasn't all flags and fake tubes today - I also had a spare input on the camera system which I wanted to use more productively. Usually it is just a wide view of the garden - more of a "security" camera view, but I had a spare "bullet cam" that was fixed to the house wall down low. I removed that and attached it to a nice big rock which I got from my parent's garden in the highlands. This gives me the flexibilty to move the camera wherever needed. Note the high-tech waterproofing! ☺

rock cam!

"Rock Cam" now provides the view seen in the very bottom right hand window of the screen, shown in "mission control" below. (Colour image). The three smaller images around it are from the nestboxes. And the three larger images are from the beepol lodge, which doesn't have its colony yet. 

the view from mission control with all cams installed

We can also get the "mission control" view on our iPhones and iPad, anywhere in the world. We can zoom into individual pictures if needed and get sound from the onboard camera microphones. 

remote viewing on iPhone

After all the setup, we went out and were quite quickly able to catch a couple of Queen in succession. We have a new capture technique (to be described later) and tried the first queen in the right hand box (box 3). It wasn't very successful and after a while she worked her way out of the capture tube (which we allowed to happen). So, we revised our tactics slightly and I was able to catch a big beautiful bufftailed queen. 

This time we introduced her to box 2 - the "pilkington" box (brown, centre) and she went in no bother. She too would have been able to get out if she wanted, by removing moss in the capture tube, but she actually stayed in the box. By the time 2 hours had passed, it had gone sunset, so she would not have left anyway due to the low light - so I'm pleased to say she has stayed overnight. 

We fully expect her to leave tomorrow morning - the question is, whether she finds the location desirable and memorises it for a future return. We'll set the CCTV to try and record her exit to see if she does. 

Queen in residenceAbove is the picture of the setup with the queen in residence. The capture tube is covered in a cloth to stop any stray light, but she can exit via the moss filled end if she wants. We added lots of daffodils so that there is immediate nearby food (and also to attract other bees to the garden, which worked: we have a redtail on them within 5 minutes). 

redtail queen on our newly added daffodilsSo, we now wait to see what tomorrow morning brings for our overnight guest... 

QB2012-06 in the nestbox overnight

Final stage: nestbox tech

It was phase 3 of the "Pilkington box" preparation today: installing the tech!

All our nestboxes and the beepol lodge are fitted with at least one (in some cases two) miniature CCTV cameras. They are small and discreet and have a built in microphone and infrared lighting - which means they can essentially see in the dark. They allow continuous monitoring of activity in the box, including the potential for motion detection. 

The other item to fit is a thermometer - the readout is external to the box, but a wire runs inside the box to sample the temperature. 

spy camera in nest box

Here's a wider view of the finished article. 

This is how the box looks located at its final site against our garage wall. The red filter is effective at allowing a view inside the nest without creating disturbance to any resdents. I haven't decided where to mount the thermometer yet. 

installation site for pilkington box

Next is the series of entrance tubes we have fitted. We have three boxes and five tubes. The idea of the tubes is to create a more natural looking entrance and also trick the bumblebees into thinking they are going underground - which of course is especially important for Bombus Terrestris (Bufftailed). 

We have tried to make the tubes look like holes in the undergrowth so that the bumbles we see them easily when scanning the garden for nest sites (of which we've seen several doing). 

entrance tube 1

Entrance tube 1 is for the left hand box. The coloured marking is to attract attention - we have noticed that the high-visibility tape is very successful at attracting bumbles. It would also provide an easier landmark to memorise should a queen check the box out and want to come back later. There is a small amount of old used mouse bedding in the entrance to create an aroma that is also appealing.

entrance tube 2

Entrance tube 2 is for the Pilkington box. This one is facing more directly upward so that it's more easily seen from a height. 

entrance tube 3a

There are three entrance "3's" - left (a), centre (b) and right (c) - as they are all connected to the right hand nestbox. This helps us try a few different designs of entrance. 

entrance tube 3b

entrance tube 3c

Finally, here is the full setup of nestboxes against our garage wall. We've trimmed the nearby grass to make the entrance tubes stand our more easily, but left some grass uncut so that the bumblebees are attracted into the garden in the first place to look for a possible nest site: they do seem to like searching over the uncut grass on the lawn.

We also have some "fake flowers" made of the yellow tape & canes to attract attention (not shown). We've seen several queens now flying from one to the other figuring out what they are. We've created a row that leads them down to the entrance tubes. We'll experiment with this to see what effect different arrangements have and whether it has any effect on queens looking for nests, or whether they don't combine forgaging behaviour with nest searching. 

the full nestbox setup with 3 boxes

We have lots of plants not shown in the picture which are now in bloom, including a Kilmarnock Pussy Willow, which seems to be very popular! But round the boxes we've put white and purple heather - the bumbles are very attracted to purple. 

So, aside from having some low-level radar ☺,  we have a pretty good setup to try and study the garden nest searching behaviour.

Phase 2 box preparation

Having put the first coat of wood stain on our new "Pilkington" nest box last night, I was left with the second phase of preparation, namely a further coat of wood stain! Not just that, but also the internal preparation of the box and the assembly of the components. 

First I decided to fit an internal liner in the box. The reason for doing this is because bumblebee nests get rather messy! As a general rule the bees themselves will not use the same nest site twice - once the colony has expired there will be a lot of dead bees and wax and debris in the nest, possible invasion by other predators and bugs and so on. For this reason most nestboxs are only recommended for a single use. 

However, the Pilkington box is a particularly fine and sturdy box and more expensive than other smaller versions, so ideally we would like to get multiple uses out of it if a colony decides to take up residence. Hence the liner will protect the inside of the box to a degree and allow a better clean up job. No guarantee it will work, but it's worth a try for the sake of a piece of cardboard!

liner template for Pilkington box

Here is the liner fitted and tape down. I'm using High Visbility cloth gaffer tape. The hi-vis colour is irrelevant as it will pretty much be almost pitch black in there, but I've chosen it because it's strong tape, and importanly is fabric, so easy for the bees to grip. I know from experience that they find silver gaffer tape harder to walk over. 

liner fitted in nestbox

Next job is to load the box with its bedding. This comes in two sorts - some paper shreddings, part of which can be used as a toilet area and some soft bedding for insulation. We were fussy last year about how this was organised, but having seen how the bees can arrange it as they want (video) we can leave it fairly loosely and roughly organised. This is all supplied with the box, as is a small amount of "mouse" bedding, which has mouse scent on it. This helps to fool the queen that the nest cavity has been used over winter for nesting by a rodent, which in bumblebee world seems to give it a seal of approval, providing Queen feels she won't find herself under future attack again. 

I didn't actually use all the mouse bedding in here - instead keeping some back to put in the entrance tube and to add to some of our other boxes. 

bedding installedNext job was to install the "cat flap" entrance system. This is a plastic flap on two wire hooks that prevent intruders getting into the nest. Any bumblebees from inside the nest learn how to operate the flap for themselves. 

The additional longer piece of wire stops the flap closing at the moment - the flap isn't needed until there are residents. And is also used as part of the training process for a Queen by gradually lowering the flap each day. 

The side buffers on the entrance stop the bumblebees from using the sides of the flap, because if they do they will think this is the correct system and then be unable to get back into the nest (rather distressing to watch, as we discovered when we experimented with different flap systems last year). 

Finally, the buffers are marked with a bright colour to aid memory and navigation in low light - the high viz tape is perfect for this also. I fitted a piece of tubing, about 60cm for now. The tubing is very cheap and readily available on eBay, and is just 2cm "cable-tidy" designed for keeping wires together and tidy (I must get some for my CCTV cables!).

A bit of tape holds the tube in the entrance well using friction.

initial entrance setupI then temporarily sited the box - just for the afternoon on the offchance it caught some passers by, as I didn't have time to complete the next phase (tech!).

You can see the general idea with the tubing is to route it so it forms an entrance in the "undergrowth" and convince the queen she is going down underground to the nest cavity. 

This is not the final location, nor the final set up of the tubing. 

temporary siting of nextbox

I still also have to paint the base struts and fit the wax-moth box.

Finally, the last job today was to adapt the internal perspex viewer of one of our existing boxes by adding some red lighting gel to the lid. This means being able to look into the nest in daylight with much less dispruption to any bumblebees inside. We got used to working with them in the beepol lodge under red light last year (as we had cut the lid off) and so this is an obvious improvement to all the nest boxes. The Pilkington box comes with a red lid as standard. 

red filter for existing nestbox

So, now I'm left to ponder the best way to fit a thermometer and camera to the new box - which really means thinking about how much drilling I want to do! Hopefully I'll get that done before the weekend. 

New Nestbox

Our new bumblebee nestbox arrived today. It's been created by George Pilkington of Nurturing Nature, and has specifically been designed to tackle limitations of existing designs, in particular:

• larger in size with improved venting
• a wax-moth proof entrance system (plastic flap) which the bees (but not the moths) can learn to negotiate
• a max moth capture system
• sturdy, sustainable production
• a red transparent viewing lid to provide viewing without interrupting the bumblebees

 The first job this evening was to paint/woodstain the box in order to protect it from the elements, as it comes untreated and will obviously have to survive unattended outside. We are just using Ronseal woodstain. 

It is actually going to take about 3 coats - which have to be finished off in the morning. Then I need to consider how/where to fit a camera inside and a thermometer. Given this box has the red viewing lid, we could probably live without the camera, but I would rather have it available if possible, not just for convenience, but because we can capture activity we might otherwise miss.

We have also decide whether to leave the entrance as is, or adapt it with some tubing into the lawn. The jury is still out on that but 5 metres of tubing arrived today, so we're covered if necessary. ☺

Thru-Tube

Although deceptively bright, it was very chilly outside today (about 8C max) and raining on and off - so we didn't expect much bumble activity. So, I planned to complete some infrastructure changes instead.

This consisted of abandoning our "cloche" nest site following the death of QB2012-02 for a new strategy (we'll use it for growing tomatoes, peppers and strawberries - the bees will love that ☺). The new strategy is to relocate the nest box along our garage wall and create a tube system to provide entrance holes amongst tufts in the lawn. Indeed, we saw 3 brave bumbles around the house and garden today looking for rest / nest sites. 

One big bufftailed Queen surprised us by doing a grand tour of the exterior of the house - check along all the walls, even windows on the top storey. It's encouraging that they will extend their search to man made locations, but what we need to do is figure out what is actually appealing to them. More is known about the natural environments they choose and how to mimic those environmens with a nest box (see the rest of this post). But less is known about how to do the same for manmade features.

Building a tube system

In order to maximise chances of a queen discovering and entering our nestboxes, I wanted to increase the number of entrance points available in the garden. This would also allow us to try different disguise/visbility strategies on the entrace to see which ones the bees favour. 

I built a tube "connector" which allows 3 incoming tubes to meet in a box, and then exit in one direction towards the nest box. When the bumblebee is in the dark tube, it is is tricked into thinking it is heading underground into our lovely warm, dry nest chamber. Total length of the tubes from one entrance to the exit into the box is about 80cm - a distance that Bombus Terrestris should be comfortable navigating to get "underground" (indeed, they should be delighted with it). 

entrance tube connecting systemThe construction is self-explanatory.

Next I filled the remainder of the box with packing material. This is just a precautionary measure to ensure there is no big cavity in the box: we don't want bumble stopping and setting up nest in this box! (There is no easy access into it anyway - it's an additional precaution). 

filled with packing to ensure there is no cavity

Then I taped and sealed the system to make it waterproof and installed it outside. 

revised nestbox site setup with "triple entrance" systemAbove you can see both our nestboxes with their entrance set ups. The box on the left is completely buried under the expanding foam shelter and the entrance tube extends out to the lawn, just bottom left of the heather by the leftmost high-viz cane. 

The box on the right is as yet unprotected (next job!) and the tube extends to the splitter box just behind the potted grasses on the right. The 3 tubes extend as follows:

1. left of the 2nd heather in from the right
2. between the 2 grass pots on the right
3. to the right of the rightmost heather pot

Here's a close "bee's eye" view:

bee's eye view of entrance holes

Note that we are trialling different marking arrangements - does a high visibility marking improve or decrease atttractiveness? 

entrance on our second nestboxFor completeness, above is the entrance hole to our left-hand nest box. Surely a queen would spot this and want to explore it! 

Queen Capture

We are developing revised tactics for the capture of queens so that they are less stressed and more inclined to explore and stay in the nest boxes. To that end, instead of using jars to capture them, we have built these tubes (kindly suggested by George Pilkington) that can be placed over the queen while she is exploring a hole in the ground/undergrowth. It is totally dark, which will keep her calm, and while she is in it, she is more likely to think she is still underground. Then we can carefully bring her back to the nestbox and introduce her with much less trauma. 

The red window allows us an additional check to see she has climbed into the tube - bumblebees do not see deep red light.

bumblebee queen capture tubes 

We are looking forward to trying this once the weather picks up!

Sad News

Very sad news this morning upon checking our nestbox - QB2012-02, our bufftailed queen, appears to have died overnight :-(

We are both gutted, because obviously our intervention is at least in part or wholly responsible, and it represents the antithesis of everything we want to do for the bees.

We will apply our usual 48 hour quarantine and provide food and warmth to be sure, as we have seen miraculous recoveries in the past - but I am not hopeful.

It is important that we learn and share the lessons as part of our research. On the face of it there was no reason for this to happen. Although this queen was captive under a (large) cloche we know they can survive in captivity given the fact that not only can they exist in greenhouses, but from the direct experience we had of the many we tended last year indoors. She had all the food (both plants and additional supplies such as sugar water and pollen) and water that she would have needed. There was warmth, shelter and safety. So, it's something of a mystery.

However, her behaviour was muted and, on top of the evidence we collected last year, I am yet further convinced that a "mood change" might be the culprit - i.e. an awareness of being captive and a corresponding lack of interest in foraging and feeding, and an increase in stress levels. Sadly we do not have the facilities to conduct measurements such as hormone levels - the best we can do is closely observe behaviour.

Capturing queens is not our prime objective this year as we will source a reared colony regardless. But, we are keen to continue researching the factors that help to encourage queens to nest and survive and thrive in gardens. We are comparing several strategies this year, and use of the cloche system is a new one.

Our mistake was to hope the Queen would still find the entrance to the nestbox, even though she had not done so for several days. The fact she didn't find it is not down to its prominence or ease of access, but simply that she stopped looking. This is a clear change in behaviour as a result of being captive.

If we continue to study this technique, the minimum change we will have to make is to release the queens after 24 hours regardless. But we are reviewing the whole technique.

I cannot express my sorrow at this truly unintended but terrible outcome, as we are painfully aware the planet will almost certainly be one more bumblebee colony short this year. I hope Mother Nature will be forgiving.

We want unkempt grass!

It turned out to be an interesting day, busier than expected as far as the bumblebees were concerned. Aside from a small update in pictures (below) we also met the head of Parks and Open spaces from our local council, and I also had contact from another leading bumbler (actually a co-founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust) with exciting nest box information. So let me deal with them in turn:

Parks and Open Spaces

Thanks are due to BCW for setting up a meeting with the head of Parks and Open Spaces for East Cambridgeshire Council, who came to visit us today. We discussed ideas and possibities for changing the way (and frequency) that grass is cut in our neighbourhood and the planting of wild meadow flowers in some locations. It was a good meeting and he was very friendly and ameniable, though with any such ideas one has to be cogniscent of the objections from other residents (such as "I pay my council tax to have the grass cut every two weeks in a perfect shape", or "I don't want wild flowers outside my house because I don't want them spreading to my garden".) Sadly it is very hard to please everyone. 

However, there are definitely things that can be done. One simple idea is to leave uncut rings around the base of trees to encourage plants to regrow (and actually protect the trees from lawnmower/strimmer damage). These rings can be extended over time in a sort of "stealth" fashion to reduce objections. It seems where a small amount of natural wilderness has been allowed to regrow in other areas it has eventually been well received by residents, who eventually get to see the benefit. 

The Queen bees were on great form - showing up just where we needed them to as we explained where all their favourite hangouts are. ☺

A new nestbox on the market

I was thrilled to be contacted by George Pilkington of Nurturing Nature with details of a new nestbox he has designed and launched. Turns out George is a conservation consultant and founder member of the BBCT and has been interested in our blog. He told me he was really wanting to tell us about his new nestbox, but couldn't until the design was protected - but one of its key features is the ability to protect from wax moth, which is a massive step forward. I wasted no time in asking George to send us one to add to our collection and try out alongside the other simpler designs. 

He has also shared some of his ideas about how to encourage queens to choose a manmade nestbox to set up colony - some ideas we had already come to know of or devised independently, others are definitely improvements on our setup. I have made some immediate entrance tube modifications based on his suggestions (see later). Most intriguingly I am looking forward to advice on capturing queens without causing them stress, which inevitably puts them off using the box regardless. 

Updates on our Cloche captives

Out two queens under our cloche have still not ventured into the nestbox so we are considering next steps (e.g. releasing them) as we do not want them to be unduly stressed or become frail. They do have adequate food supply, but we're not convinced they're using it. They may be getting too cold overnight by not using the box. We did see them both mooching about today though and we put some springs of heather on the ground (since they weren't flying up to the tall pots) and the Early Bee immediately tucked in. 

Temperature wise the cloche is doing a great job - while it was 12 degrees in the garden is was 21C under the cloche, so this  must be working in their favour. But after their initial introduction and buzzing we haven't seen any flying activity and that bothers me. To us humans it looks like a "mood change" and we saw the same thing with our "indoor" bees (disabled) last year. And of course, we know that recent research suggests that bees can potentially experience "depression" (a change in propensity to be active, really). We will monitor this carefully. 

Our first 2 captive queensOur bufftail is beautiful though and she loves sitting on the ribbon in the corner for some reason. 

garden setup changes 

fake "flowers" to attract attentionWe've read numerous times that bumbles can be attracted to bright yellow and that it can be helpful if nest entrances are marked out like this. This is something we'd already done with our nests, but we got some of our own evidence of bees' interest in it when we saw yellow tape on our CCTV cables. I've now added tape to some canes to create a splash of colour as they fly past the garden - hopefully a little extra to tempt them in for a closer look. Never thought my high-visibility tape would be used for this. ☺

Based on George's pictures and suggestions we have also extended the entrance tubing on our nestbox, so that it is now disguised on the lawn (see the tiny yellow fleck in the picture below). We saw a very large queen nest searching over our lawn today and in fact after a few minutes caught her and introduced her to the box (without sealing it). Of course, she left fairly quickly, but it was interesting to see where in the garden she was and wasn't looking; which backs up for extending the entrance tube. 

nestbox entrance extended with a tube across to the lawn

And finally

Our pussy willow tree is starting to blossom! It's a little behind some of those on the edge of the field - but not by much. I took a close up picture of one of the catkins - you can see why the bees are going nuts for them - look at all the access to pollen!

pollen-rich catkins (pussy willow)

We're hoping that over the next few days we'll have a lot of queens showing an interest in it!